Why Does It Feel Like There’s Something Missing From My Life?

Since leaving London and full-time employment last summer, I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time trying to adjust, trying to work out how to get the perfect balance in life.

I can work as little or as much as I want – depending I guess on how exhausted I fancy being and how desperate I am to go on holidays and buy champagne and shop in Topshop (mildly desperate).

But for me, the scariest and most overwhelming thing about my ‘new’ life has been all the time I’ve spent on my own. Often I think the fact I have SO much time to focus on myself is a bad thing, it makes me overthink – and a lot of that overthinking isn’t about fun things like blog post ideas and what to have for dinner, it’s about how to be happy, am I happy, am I anxious, what should I be worrying about, am I worrying enough, do people like me, blahdy blahdy blah.

And I’ve come to a bit of a conclusion – that as happy and content as I am right now, because I am happy and content, happy and content on a level that I’ve never known before – there’s something missing.

Remember that thing that got shared aaaages ago on Facebook where there was a jar, and if you fill it with big stones (which represent your job, your health, your family) then your life and jar is full. But then you can add smaller stones, which represent things like hobbies and friends and holidays, and even smaller grains of sand for the even littler things – and it makes the jar even more full. The moral of the story being that if you worry too much over the little things and they take over your life then you’ll never make room for the big stones, which are the foundations to life.

I feel like I have my big stones sorted, but there’s still room for more, like… fulfilment. Does that make sense?

I don’t want to sound greedy by asking for more than my health and my happiness, but I feel like things haven’t quite slotted into place in the exact perfect way, I feel like I could push myself more, that there is something else.

As I’m writing this post I’m wondering if it even makes any sense, sozzles.

When you work 40 hours a week in an office, add a few hours of overtime in, and then another few hours for commuting, then you add a social life and the odd gym class, you’re exhausted. You are done in, you are constantly looking for tiny slots in your schedule to get more sleep, to get more YOU time, but for me it’s the opposite. I need more things to occupy me, keep my brain busy.

Sure, there are weeks, like last week, where actually I didn’t have enough time to get stuff done, I felt a bit up and down and all over the place. But in general, with the point I am in life right now, there’s something missing. There is, in general, time and energy for something else.

Do I want to expland my blog and make it into more of a website with more than one post a day and maybe have more writers? Do I want to do something nice like work in a cat shelter? Do I want to spend more time travelling about to see my friends, because let’s be honest, my social life in Ipswich is err, pretty slow? Or do I secretly want like a baby or summin? I can’t believe I just wrote that. I feel a bit sick and flustered. Maybe I should lie down. Or drink wine and listen to Ed Sheeran in a dark room.

Or is this just the freelance life? The blogging life? It’s not even necessarily that I have bags of spare time to throw away, otherwise I’d have already bought the Sims 4 because HELLO EXCITING VIRTUAL LIFE, it’s that maybe my life lacks variety, it needs more human interaction.

Spending so much time at home on my own is a constant battle. Mostly because it’s stupidly lonely. I struggle with motivation. If I start the day with a friendly burst of Netflix on the sofa, then I struggle to pick myself up into working mode for the rest of the day.

Take today, the day I’m writing this on for example. It got to 3pm before I sat down at my desk. I was ironing, I was watching Grey’s Anatomy, I was buying petrol, I was rolling about on the sofa refreshing Instagram.

Don’t think for one minute I’d have my life any other way. Being self-employed means I never get the fear anymore, not ever. Do you know how poetically amazing life is without the fear of 7am alarms and meetings and bosses? It’s insane. It’s everything. It’s without a doubt the way forward.

And living with Chris? It’s my absolute favourite. It beats my moss-green carpeted Leytonstone flat every day of the week. But I can’t put my finger on what I need, what will complete my already pretty perfect package. And it’s that, that’s slowly driving me a little bit bloody mental.